Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: No Arbitrary Preference Among Persons

THAT WE ARE NOT ALONE: that there are others of our kind is indisputable. Since it is self-evident that the fundamental or basic human values are basic to us, it would seem to follow that those basic values are fundamental to others of our kind. "Have I any reason to deny that they are really good, or that they are fit matters of interest, concern, and favour by that man and by all those who have to do with him?" NLNR, 106. There is therefore a certain awareness we have that others have a desire to flourishing (happiness) that is other than our desire for flourishing (happiness). How is one to be given preference to the other? Certainly, this must not be done arbitrarily, and practical reasonableness requires that reason come in to govern this relation. This intimates already questions of friendship, of collaboration, of justice; however, these issues are separate from the the basic requirement that arises from the awareness that others have basic values no different from our own. That requirement of practical reasonableness which excludes arbitrary bias is that there must be a "fundamental impartiality among the human subjects who are or may be partakers of those [basic] goods." NLNR, 107.

It is true that we may reasonably interest and concern ourselves with our own well-being. There is a "reasonable scope for self-preference," and we may reasonably expend efforts to advance our well-being. That will also include our family, tribe, and other groups to which we belong. Yet that self-solicitude cannot reasonably be based on the claim that our well-being and flourishing is of more value than the well-being or flourishing of others. "Simply because it is mine" is no reason: "that I am I and am not you" is no justification for evaluating well-being differently between me and you. This distinction of "I" and "Thou" is not one that allows for preference as to persons. Rather, it is more subtle: "the only reason for me to prefer my well-being is that it is through my self-determined and self-realizing participation in the basic goods that I can do what reasonableness suggests and requires." NLNR, 107. In other words, the self-preference is tangential, it arises as a collateral or concomitant to the reasonable pursuit of practical reason as it applies to me.

But that reasonable pursuit for my well-being or happiness and its concomitant self-focus must not go beyond certain bounds: there remains "a pungent critique of selfishness, special pleading, double standards, hypocrisy, indifference to the good of others whom one could easily help, . . . and all the other manifold forms of egoistic and group bias." NLNR, 107. In fine, "one's moral judgments and preferences," to be reasonable, must "be universalizable. NLNR, 107. That is nothing other than to say that one element of practical reasonableness is the Golden Rule.* "Do unto others what you would have them to unto you," which may be amplified thus:

Put yourself in your neighbor's shoes. Do not condemn others for what you are will to do yourself. Do not (without special reason) prevent others getting for themselves what you are trying to get for yourself.

NLNR, 108.

While we may not be arbitrary--that is unreasonable--with self-preference when it comes to the "I-Thou" question, we may have a reasonable self-preference. The same is true when it comes to the "We-You" question. The rule of non-arbitrariness (which is the same as the rule of reason) works not only among the first and second (and third) persons singular, but also among the first and second (and third) persons plural. Therefore we may not have arbitrary self-preferences for those social structures in which we participate relative to those of others. We may not have arbitrary preferences for those families, tribes, cultures, or nations to which we belong. That, however, does not mean that we cannot have reasonable self- or group-preferences. How, then, is one to determine the boundaries of those?

Heuristic devices** have been adopted to answer the question of what self-preferences are reasonable and thereby moral, and there is a considerable difference between the classical notion of an "ideal observer" or a "benevolently divine viewpoint" and the modern notions based upon a "social contract" such as the Rawlsian "veil of ignorance" in a hypothetical "Original Position."

The classical "ideal observer" or "benevolently divine viewpoint" allows for some reasonable self-preference with respect to persons or groups, but does not allow that we be impartial to the aspects of basic human value. In other words, in the classical heuristic, we had to treat basic human values the same, which means that it could not slight one over another nor favor one over another. Indeed, we could not neglect the rule that we treat these equally and favor the advance of those values and shun the opposite of those values.

The modern "social contract" theories such as the Rawlsian "veil of ignorance" in the "Original Position" do not consider human basic values as the same, or perhaps better, they do not guard against them being arbitrarily treated. This is consonant with fundamental relative viewpoint, their rejection of a natural law that identifies (according to Finnis self-evidently) basic human values must be equally treated and any one of which cannot be slighted at the expense of another. These theories therefore ignore the second requirement of practical reasonableness--that each basic value or good be treated as a basic value or good,*** that there cannot be any discounting or exaggeration of any of the basic human values. They consider only impartiality among persons, and neglect the equally necessary requirement of impartiality among basic human goods.

There is therefore a fundamental weakness in these theories: from the fact that a principle chosen in the Rawlsian hypothetical "Original Position" is neutral among persons does not assure that it is neutral among basic human values. More, that a principle cannot be justified under the hypothetical Rawlsian "Original Position" does not mean that that that principle is unfair or unjust or improper in the real world. NLNR, 109. In the real world reason can distinguish between the self-evident human goods and their opposites. In the Rawlsian hypothetical "Original Position," the chooser is behind a "veil of ignorance" that does not allow him to make this distinction. As a matter of reason (definition), by favoring human basic goods and disfavoring their contraries, we cannot be accused of showing improper favor to individuals or to groups. In the social contractarian or Rawlsian heuristic, we might because under their "thin theory" of rights, the basic human values are relegated to the background, since for them, the basic human values are replaced by individual choice, by values of any person's own choosing. The matrix of the fundamental basic human goods which extends into the Original Position, therefore, is not part of the Rawlsian construct. That's why, ultimately, it results in justifications of the horrors of abortion, vicious euthanasia, or practical socialism.

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*Lex Christianorum has had multiple postings on the Golden Rule, with its various cultural, historical, and religious expressions.
**A Heuristic device is an intellectual tool to help solve a particular problem b y means of a short cut. Heuristics comes from the the Greek Εὑρίσκω, the Greek word for discover or find, and refers to techniques for solving problems in sort of a quick-and-dirty but sufficiently reliable way.
***See Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: No Arbitrary Plans.

Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: No Arbitrary Plans

ARBITRARINESS IS THE NEMESIS of practical reason and of law. That is why arbitrariness in one's choices is not tolerable under a regime of practical reasonableness, and why, as we discussed in our prior posting, practical reasonableness requires that a person adopt a coherent, that is, not arbitrary, plan of life. Arbitrariness is also shunned in the decision of what values ought to be accommodated with any person's plan of life. Specifically, "there must be no leaving out of account, or arbitrary discounting or exaggeration, of any of the basic human values" in the formulation of one's life plan.

As we noted in the prior posting. One is free to do anything that is not inconsistent with the basic human values, but one cannot do everything that is consistent with the basic values for the very simple reason that we are creatures with limits and are temporarily bound. As a matter of sheer living and one's limited creaturehood, concentration or focus on some basic human values will either temporarily or even permanently be part of one's coherent life plan. This necessarily affects the other basic human values. In greeting a man, one necessarily, even if temporarily, shuns another. This emphasizing of some values over others must not be arbitrary, but must itself be based upon practical reason, considering such things as "one's capacities, circumstances, and even of one's tastes." NLNR, 105. The emphasis of one value, however, can become unreasonable if it the result of a devaluation of another basic value. Similarly, the emphasis on one basic value can be unreasonable if it is the result of overemphasizing a subordinate, derivative, supporting, or instrumental good, or, a fortiori, overemphasizing an even more distant secondary and conditionally value good, one that is not a basic value itself.

Examples may be given. A naturally gregarious person may relish the good of friendship and may emphasize such a value as part of fashioning his comprehensive plan of life. It would be consonant with practical reason to emphasize such a basic value since it is not arbitrarily that it is selected, but rather because of the person's predispositions, likes, and capacity for friendship. However, if the gregarious persons were to disdain knowledge and deprecate its value, and cut it largely out of his comprehensive plan altogether, it would be an unreasonable plan taken as a whole. There is a difference between recognizing that one may not have an aptitude, talent, or liking for knowledge, one the one hand, and thinking and acting as if the basic good of knowledge is not a real form of good.

Finnis therefore rejects the Rawlsian concept of "thin theory of the good."* Instead, he advocates a "thick theory of the good," one that includes all of the basic human goods and requires a person to select without arbitrariness a plan of life that incorporates them all or at least does not consider any of of them of no account. That person must also allow that others may have a plan of life that incorporates the basic values in a manner different than his, and he must allow for the others to do so, but he may also prevent others, especially those under his care, from incorporating into his plan of life the opposite of human values or goods. Under Rawlsian theory such could never be done.

Under a concept of justice built by a thin theory, the libertine thrives and the virtuous suffer. Under a concept of justice built by a natural law thick theory, the virtuous thrives, and the libertine suffers.

Which makes more sense?

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*In his Theory of Justice, John Rawls used the heuristic device of "original position" as a means for arriving at "fairness." Rawls puts us back to an "original position" and requires two assumptions. First, he demands a "veil of ignorance," so that in the "original position" we are unaware of any information that would distinguish us from any other person, so that we are not aware of the person who we would be. We do not know what our place will be in society. We shall not know our personal endowments: race, sex, intelligence, abilities, and other natural assets. We shall not know our external endowments: wealth, education, fortune, class, and so forth. We shall not even know our conceptions of the good: what our values are, what our aims, our purposes, our believes shall be. We know only that we shall have some endowments and that we shall some conceptions that we hold dear. But it is behind this "veil of ignorance" that we must chose the principles of justice, as if, als ob, we are ignorant. The "veil of ignorance" is aimed and preventing prejudice or bias in the choosing of the principles of justice, thereby removing it from the influence of convention. But there is one sort of knowledge we do know in the "original position," and that shall knowledge of the "primary goods." Primary goods for Rawls are those "things which it is supposed a rational man wants whatever else he wants," and Rawls numbers among them rights, liberties, opportunities, powers, wealth, and self-respect.

So while the veil of ignorance provides that the parties deliberate in conditions of fairness and unanimity, the account of primary goods generates the minimal motivations necessary to get a problem of rational choice going, and to make possible a determinate solution. Together, the two assumptions assure that the parties act only to those interests that are common interests, that is, common to all rational persons, the foremost of which turns out to be an interest in establishing terms of social co-operation such that each person will have the fullest liberty to realize his aims and purposes compatible with and equal liberty for others.

Michael J. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 25.

This list of limited, primary goods is what Rawls calls the "thin theory of the good." It is "thin" because it is starkly minimalistic: by decreasing the controversy of goods, Rawls increases the breadth of their practical universality. A "thin theory of the good" cannot choose between particular values or goods except minimally because it has insufficient substance, and is insipid in guidance, and therefore allows for many more conceptions of what is a "good life" than a "thick" theory of the good, such as the natural law which would have a broader view of goods other than the "primary goods" of Rawls. It, of course, is prejudicial against anyone who hold a "thick" theory, which means it is naturally affinitive toward liberalism (how convenient for the liberal Rawls!). Rawls would reject giving any intrinsic value to basic goods such as truth, play, art or friendship. As Finnis observes, "Rawls gives no satisfactory reason for this radical emaciation of human good, and no satisfactory reason is available: the 'thin theory' is arbitrary." Ergo, Rawls is unreasonable. QED.

Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: Be Coherent

A COHERENT PLAN OF LIFE IS THE FIRST requirement of practical reasonableness identified by Finnis in his book Natural Law and Natural Rights. We are not free, if we are to be reasonable (and being unreasonable is not being free, but being arbitrary and chained to whim), unless we have a rationally coherent plan of life. The inclinations, urges, desires that we have must somehow be reined and disciplined into some sort of rational ordering or coherent plan of life. This means that it must be externally and internally coherent and rational. This coherent plan must be rational with respect to basic values, and in ordering them it must not be internally inconsistent so that a person is not at cross purposes with himself. It must, moreover, be concerned with more than here-and-now. It must extend out over time. Indeed it must not only extend out over time, it must even consider that which is beyond time, the novissima.

Implicitly or explicitly one must have a harmonious set of purposes and orientations, not as the 'plans' or 'blueprints' of a pipe-dream, but as effective commitments. . . . It is unreasonable to life merely from moment to moment, following immediate cravings, or just drifting.

NLNR, 104.

Finis Gloriae Mundi by Juan de Valdés Leal

Two things ought to be stressed with respect to the adoption of a coherent plan of life. First, it is not to be confused with adopting or inventing values. The basic values are not ours to mold or create. The choice is not adopting a coherent set of values of our own making (and it is questionable that values of our own making would be coherent) since we have no basis for ignoring the self-evident human values--life, knowledge, play, aesthetic experience, sociability, practical reasonableness, religion--and participating in those of our own manufacture. There is no rational basis in creating basic values that do not exist, and we lack the power to fashion them out of whole cloth as if ex nihilo. There is no rational basis for ignoring the self-evident basic values that do exist and not participating in them. It is in fact a refusal to participate in being if one ignores the basic values. One is not acting in accordance with practical reasonableness in deciding to choose death, or ugliness, or misanthropy, or impiety, or ignorance, or power, as a basic value. One is only acting in accordance with practical reasonableness when--confronted with the basic values of life, play, knowledge, aesthetic experience, sociability, practical reasonableness, religion--we adopt a coherent plant of life that attempts to participate in them in a rational way.

Second, the coherent plan of life must go beyond the immediate. It is a long-range, lasting, staying, sort of habitual thing. It is not a short-term ordering, hinc et nunc, but a long-term ordering. As Finnis puts it: "It is also irrational to devote one's attention exclusively to specific projects which can be carried out completely by simply deploying defined means to defined objectives." NLNR, 104 (emphasis added).

To be goal driven is not necessarily having a coherent plan of life. One can have myriad particular goals and never have an overall goal, and so be only marginally better than the man who acts by whim and urge. There are many fools: μωροὶ or morons, there are many who are ἄφρων or imprudent. Those who build on a foundation of sand, those who put the less important over the more important, those who bring lamps but forget the oil, those who say in their heart there is no God, and those whom Finnis is referring to here, the men and women full of temporal thoughts, men and women who work their myriad goals and have never thought beyond their immediate goal of amassing assets--be they fame, celebrity, wealth, love, assets that moth and rust destroy, assets that thieves can break in and steal, assets that are are time-and-place-bound. There is warrant for thinking about things that are not time-and-place-bound. (Cf. Matt. 6:19-20).

What is meant by coherent plan of life is something overarching, something Finnis defines as "the redirection of inclinations, the reformation of habits, the abandonment of old and adoption of new projects, as circumstances require, and, overall, the harmonization of all one's deep commitments." NLNR, 104. It is in fashioning one's coherent plan of life and the commitments therein entailed that one is exercising authentic autonomy. One acts freely within the law of the real, within the constraints of the self-evident reality of the pre-moral goods. The possibilities are virtually endless, but the possibilities for any one man must be coherently engaged in, and engagement requires a plan. It is through such a plan that one participates in these basic goods.

The image is not one of a gyrovague, a wanderer with no set finality, but of a pilgrim with a definite goal, a pilgrim with a certain bourne. And though contingencies, foreseen and unforeseen, we shall forever confront, we should be committed to this general plan of life which coherently orders our everyday activity and choices. This plan looks ahead as well as in the moment. It even considers the novissima, that last days, the days that may be beyond.

In omnibus operibus tuis memorare novissima tua . . .

In all your works, remember your last days . . . .

Ecclus. 7:40.

It is unreasonable to think that one's time on earth is forever, and a human person's coherent plan of life must consider the beyond: In fashioning a coherent plan of life, he or she must not forget:

Hic breve vivitur,
Hic breve plangitur,
Hic breve fletur;
Non breve vivere,
Non breve plangere,
Retribuetur.*

We do not want to be like the rich man whose plan it was to heap up riches, who never considered the beyond, and who ended up leaving his entire life's work to another and working for naught. It was he, who full of goals and full of success and full of temporary gain, failed to consider for the novissima. He failed to adopt a coherent plan of life that ignored the beyond. He it was that heard the words of God that every man must fear: Stulte! "You fool! (Luke 12:20).

Who can survive being called fool by God?

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*Here life is quickly gone, / Here grief is ended soon, / Here tears are flowing; / Life ever fresh is there, / Life free from anxious care, / God's hand bestowing. See Horatio Parker, Hora Novissima (trans., Isabella Parker).

Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: Be Reasonable

PRACTICAL REASONABLENESS, ITSELF A BASIC GOOD, may be distinguished from the other basic goods--life, knowledge, play, aesthetic experience, sociability, and religion--because of its structural or ordering role in man's life, its role in ushering him into the moral life, and its role in guiding him toward happiness or authentic human flourishing. Participation in the basic values presents a virtually infinite set of possibilities. In our short, ephemeral span of life, we cannot participate in the fullness of these values, in their myriad possibilities and combinations. Vita breve. Bona multa. We are free to do any good; we are not free to do every good. We have to choose among values, among basic goods, we have to make some commitments which prevent us from making others--we have to decide what must be done, and what, alas, must of necessity be left undone. Our freedom, our (relative) autonomy allows us choice. But our (relatively brief) temporal existence limits our choice. What is it that is to guide that choice? Our participation in one value in particular: the basic value of practical reasonableness.

For amongst the basic forms of good that we have no good reason to leave out of account is the good of practical reasonableness, which is participated in precisely by shaping one's participation in the other basic goods, by guiding one's commitments, one's selection of projects, and what one does in carrying them out.

NLNR, 100. It is at this juncture--in a person's selection of commitment, projects, acts--that he steps from the pre-moral realm into the realm of morality. It is the use of practical reasonableness that leads man into the field of ethics. "'Ethics', as classically conceived, is simply a recollectively and/or prospectively reflective expression of this problem and of the general lines of solutions which have been thought reasonable." NLNR, 101. It is practical reasonablenss applied to the basic values either looking forward or looking backward. It is practical reason promethean and epimethean that leads to the moral life.

But this is all rather vague and wanting of precision. And so philosophers have identified a number of mandatory requirements of practical reason that provide some guidance as to the proper exercise of this basic value. These are the requirements that the phronimos of Aristotle, the homo prudens, will follow.* He who follows these requirements is mature, a spoudaois,** a man or woman who lives well and who generally may be regarded as "happy," that is, participating in happiness, in human flourishing, in well-being. To participate in the basic values under the guidance of the value of practical reasonableness is to participate in being in our unique way, in accordance with our physis, with our natura. Therefore, these requirements are not only those of practical reasonableness, but are requirements "(by entailment) of (human) nature." NLNR, 103. The basic value of practical reasonableness may be said to be or express "the 'natural law method' of working out the (moral) 'natural law' from the first (pre-moral) 'principles of natural law'". NLNR, 103.

Finnis (NLNR, 103-127) identifies the following requirements of practical reasonableness:

1. The person must adopt a coherent plan of life;
2. The person must not arbitrarily prefer any basic value above any other basic value;
3. The person must not arbitrarily prefer any person above any other person;
4. The person must exercise a certain detachment and a certain commitment;
5. The person must consider the (limited) relevant of consequences, i.e., he must consider efficiency within reason;
6. The person must respect every basic value in every act;
7. The person must consider the common good; and
8. The person must follow his or her conscience.

Applying these requirements of practical reasonableness upon the raw data of the pre-moral basic values is how man is introduced into the world of morality.

These requirements shall be the focus of our next several postings.
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*Phronimos (φρόνιμος) is Greek for someone who is practically sensible, wise, virtuous, a prudent man, a homo prudens, or prud'homme.
**Spoudaios (σπουδαῖος) is a mature man or woman, an earnest, morally sedulous man or woman who is living diligently well.

Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: The Seven Basic Values

TO GET AT OTHER BASIC VALUES beyond knowledge, one has to cut through urges, drives, tendencies which perhaps in some way are aligned with values or contradict them, the material, physical, psychological conditions which may be required for the exercise of values, individual and particular goals that participate in the values, and means used to implement values. One has also to clamber over the myriad expressions of those values in a variety of cultures. But Finnis is confident that careful study yields a relatively non-controversial list of basic values that are incontrovertible and self-evident. What values may be placed in that set that can fit in the blank: "____ is a good in itself"? Finnis identifies seven: life, knowledge, play, aesthetic experience, sociability (friendship), practical reasonableness, and 'religion.'

There is a particular importance in calling these values basic. In the Finnisian theory of natural law, basic when used with the term value has a technical meaning:

First, each [basic value] is equally self-evidently a form of good. Secondly, none can be analytically reduced to being merely an aspect of any of the others, or to being merely instrumental in the pursuit of the others. Thirdly, each one, when we focus on it, can reasonably be regarded as the most important. Hence there is no objective hierarchy amongst them.

NLNR, 92. The basic values are, in short, equally fundamental. "[T]here is no objective priority of value amongst them," though in our self-determination "[e]ach of us has a subjective order of priority amongst the basic values." NLNR, 93. They are, however, objectively incommensurable.*

Another point that Finnis makes with respect to the basic values is that they are not really pursued as one might goals, and they are certainly not ever fully realized in toto. Rather, the basic values are participated in. "So 'pursuit' and 'realization' are rather misleading in their connotations here, and it is convenient to say that one participates in the basic values." NLNR, 96. Participating in such human values through projects, activities, and choices often leads to pleasure, but it need not. Ultimately, whether pleasure is obtained or not, participating in such human values leads to happiness, not in the trite sense, but in the deeper, fuller, Aristotelian sense of eudaimonia, an authentic human flourishing:

By participating in them [the basic human values] in the way one chooses to, one hopes not only for the pleasure of successfully consummated physical performance and the satisfaction of successfully completed projects, but also for 'happiness' in the deeper, less usual sense of that word in which it signifies, roughly, a fullness of life, a certain development of a person, a meaningfulness of one's existence.

NLNR, 96.

There is, ultimately, some link between these basic human values and the natural law:

[T]he practical principles which enjoin one to participate in those basic forms of good, through the practically intelligent decisions and free actions that constitute one the person one is and is to be, have been called in the Western philosophical tradition the first principles of natural law, because they lay down for us the outlines of everything one could reasonably want to do, to have, and to be.

NLNR, 97. With this understanding of what Finnis understands a basic value to be, we now turn to the basic values he has identified.

Life in its broadest sense is such a self-evident basic value. It includes "every aspect of the vitality (vita, life) which puts a human being in good shape for self-determination." NLNR, 86. It is an obvious value, and a tremendous investment of human resources, both individual and social, are aimed at supporting this value. It is what lies behind the drive for self-preservation, what lies behind the great weight given to the transmission of life by the procreation of children which is nothing other than "life-in-its-transmission," and what lies behind myriad social institutions, including our legal, medical, and charitable institutions. NLNR, 86-87. Though the value is intellectual at root, it shows itself predictably in strong urges of self-preservation and urges to couple. The value of life, however, must be distinguished from the manner in which it is supported by more basic physical, emotional, psychological drives.

Knowledge, another basic value, was treated in our last post.**

Play is "engaging in performances which have no point beyond the performance itself, enjoyed for its own sake." NLNR, 87. Whether solitary (solitaire) or social (bridge), whether intellectual (crossword puzzle) or physical (rock climbing), whether strenuous (jogging) or relaxed (drinking bourbon and smoking a cigar), whether highly structured (playing chess) or relatively informal (charades), conventional (an opera or ballet) or ad hoc (a practical joker), it is expressed in multitudinous ways.

Aesthetic experience, another basic good in Finnis's list, in some ways overlaps with play, but it is nevertheless its own value. Aesthetic experience is broader because it includes both a passive appreciation of beauty (e.g., in nature, appreciating the orange alpenglow on a snow-capped mountain peak, for instance, or in art, e.g., listening to Franz Schubert's Piano Sonatas), although it may also exist in the experiences associated with the creation of beauty (painting) or active appreciation of it (reading poetry, e.g., Gerard Manley Hopkins).

Sociability is the next basic value identified by Finnis. This value's expansive breadth includes the minimum level of social peace and harmony for tolerable society, to stronger, more intimate forms of community and collaboration, to the zenith of its expression in friendship. It would be unreasonable to take the position that one is better off without friends. Self-evidently, friendship is a great value that has everywhere been appreciated.

Practical reasonableness is the good of "being able to bring one's own intelligence to bear effectively (in practical reason that issues in action) on the problems of choosing ones actions and lifestyle and shaping one's own character." NLNR, 89. It has both negative and positive, and internal and external components, and so is almost an amalgam complex, one "involving freedom and reason, integrity and authenticity." Obviously, bringing one's intelligence to play in the acts of one's life requires, negatively, freedom from compulsion (internal or external). It also requires something positive, namely the recruitment of reason so as to bring forth "an intelligent and reasonable order," a ratio ordinis, "into one's own actions and habits and practical attitudes." NLNR, 88. It is internal: one's emotions and urges ought to be self-disciplined under reason's rule so as to be in some sort of tranquility of order. It is also external: one's outward actions ought to be consonant with, integrated with, one's internal ordering and so authentic.

'Religion' is the last basic value identified by Finnis. Finnis blames Cicero for the "scare quotes" around the word.*** Essentially, however, at the core of this value is the limited nature of all the other values: they all terminate, at least for any particular individual, with death. How, then, can these other values relate to the greater reality of the cosmos beyond any one of us? What is the source of human freedom, human intelligence, and human self-mastery. What is the value above all human values? Is there "something . . . which is free, intelligent, and sovereign in a way (and over a range) no human being can be?" NLNR, 89. Finnis acknowledges that a materialist, an empiricist, one who "doubt[s] or den[ies] that the universal order-of-things has any origin beyond the 'origins known to the natural sciences," will have "misgivings" with this value. NLNR, 89. But the point is that there is a self-evident value in pursuing the ultimate meaning of life, of human freedom, and of reason even if (arguendo) the answer is that there is no meaning. But really, this is conceding too much. Utrum Deus sit,† one should think, is not a trip to Ultima Thule, an unattainable goal. The "God question" is important, fundamental:

But is it reasonable to deny that it is, at any rate, peculiarly important to have thought reasonably and (where possible) correctly about these questions of the origins of cosmic order and of human freedom and reason . . . And does not that importance in large part consist in this: that if there is a transcendent origin of the universal order-of-things and of human freedom and reason, then one's life and actions are in fundamental disorder if they are not brought, as best one can, into some sort of harmony with whatever can be known or surmised about the transcendent other and its lasting order?

NLNR, 90.

In addition to these basic values, Finnis also identifies ways or modes of pursuing the basic values. Basic values are "aspects of human self-determination and self-realization," but they are not the only aspects. There are also aspects that are modal or vital (and not just instrumental) to the exercise of the aspects of basic values. Finnis gives examples of courage, generosity, moderation, gentleness--what seems to be a list of virtues. They are very close to the basic values and almost enjoy the status of "good for its own sake" that the basic values do. Sometimes these ways or modes become more important that the basic goods, in which event you may have "'peculiar' conventions, norms, institutions, and orders of preference." NLNR, 91. He gives as example the aristocratic code of honor--the pundonor or punto de honor that led to the code duello in contradiction to the very basic value of life, and so led to such events as that between Alexander Hamilton and Raymond Burr, a display of foolishness if there ever was one.

Finnis is clear to distinguish "inclinations and urges of one's nature" from basic values since "there are many inclinations and urges that do not correspond to or support any basic value: for example, the inclination to take more than one's share, or the urge to gratuitous cruelty." NLNR, 91. He insists that his list of basic good is not derived from inclinations and urges--whether these are in support of the basic values or to their detriment. Inclinations and urges, moreover, are in need of justification, whereas the basic human values are not. Indeed, there are times where these inclinations are so destructive of human values that they are "as baffling as persistent illogicality, as opaque and pointless as, say, a demand for a plate of mud for no reason at all." NLNR, 91. Whether they arise as a result of a corruption of the search for a basic value through "exclusiveness or inversion" or just simple "psychosomatic disease," these corrupt inclinations remain separate and distinct from the basic values.

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*For the notion of "incomensurability" see the article Inommensurable Values in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
**See Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: To Know is Good.
***For an extensive treatment on the word "religio," see Friedrich Max Müller's Gifford Lecture 2, available on line at Gifford Lectures.

It is well known that Lactantius derived religio from religare, to bind or hold back, and he did so, not simply as a philologist, but as a theologian. ‘We are born,’ he says, ‘under the condition that, when born, we should offer to God our justly due services, should know Him only, and follow Him only. We are tied to God and bound to Him (religati) by the bond of piety, and from this has religion itself received its name, and not, as Cicero has interpreted it, from attention (a relegendo).’

Before we examine this etymology, it will be useful to give the etymology which Lactantius ascribes to Cicero, and which he is bold enough to reject. Cicero says: ‘Those who carefully took in hand all things pertaining to the worship of the gods, were called religiosi, from relӗgere,—as neat people (elegantes) were so called from elegere, to pick out; likewise diligent people, diligentes, from diligere, to choose, to value, and intelligent people from intelligere, to understand; for in all these words there is the meaning of legere, to gather, to choose, the same as in religiosus.

Müller, Gifford Lectures, Lecture 2 (footnotes omitted) (citing to Lactantius, Institut. Div. iv. 28 and Cicero, De Nat. Deor. ii. 28). In using "scare quotes," then Finnis seems to be leaning toward a Lactantian definition of "religion," rather than a Ciceronian.
†Latin: "Whether God is"